Tag: byron york

To say that Byron York is required reading for someone who wants to be informed is like saying you should wash your hands after going to the bathroom. It’s something so basic it should be automatic.

So naturally this rule applies to his piece today about the GOP Plan to take down Trump:

Insiders have watched as Trump defied what many believed were immutable laws of the political universe. First they thought Trump wouldn’t run. Then they thought voters wouldn’t take a reality-TV star seriously. Then they thought gaffes would kill Trump as they had other candidates. None of that turned out as expected.

But there is one belief Trump has not yet tested, and that is the political insiders’ unshakeable faith that negative ads work.

Apparently they’ve already tested their negative ad plan with some success in Iowa:

“We primed the pump with our ads in Iowa,” says Club president David McIntosh. “We did some polling afterward. The ads flipped Trump from first to second place among caucus-goers and put a dent in his approval rating.”

And there are people willing and raring to go based when the time comes:

“There are a large number of donors and political activists who want to do it.”

The triggers for the anti-Trump onslaught would likely be: 1) if next month arrives with Trump still in the lead, and 2) if Trump begins airing his own ads. “Once that starts, you’ll see a lot of people saying we’ve waited long enough,” notes McIntosh.

The whole piece, like all of York’s work comes with a mandatory “Read the Whole Thing” but before you do I’d like to take issue with a single sentence describing what this means:

Which could lead to an extraordinary scenario in which GOP stalwarts go to war to destroy their own party’s likely nominee.

Personally I don’t find that extraordinary at all. While it’s a novel thing for a party attacking it the GOP has been willing to go to war with it’s base for the last several years it’s just a hop skip and jump to going after an unacceptable GOP frontrunner.

Like this:

Remember those sweet, warm New England summers? Remember sipping lemonade underneath a shady tree? Remember when you hit that pedestrian with your car at the crosswalk and then just drove away? Pepperidge Farm remembers, but Pepperidge Farm ain’t just gonna keep it to Pepperidge Farm’s self free of charge. Maybe you go out and buy yourself some of these distinctive Milano cookies, maybe this whole thing disappears.

Mrs. Clinton was a key player in her husband’s defense on both occasions, and today she is close with Abedin, her long-time aide. So why shouldn’t Abedin try to emulate her mentor’s success?

Because it won’t work. Abedin can’t follow Volume I of the Clinton playbook because Weiner can’t deny everything, as Clinton did — falsely but successfully — in ’92. And she can’t follow Volume II because Weiner is not president of the United States.

For one thing Clinton had plenty of help

Stephanopoulos was dumbfounded. “[Clinton] lied,” the campaign aide later recounted thinking. “How come he let me hang out there? Never a word … while I swore to reporters her story was false.” But Clinton kept denying everything. And so did the loyal Stephanopoulos, claiming the tape was fake, or doctored or something. A mostly sympathetic press accepted the story, and Clinton survived.

Even if Anthony Weiner could lie as well as Bill Clinton, which he can’t, and even if he had an aide who could lie as well as George Stephanpoulos, which he doesn’t — even if all that were the case, Volume I of the Clinton playbook would still not be an option for Weiner. The proof of his sexting escapades is just too overwhelming.

Byron does forget the “Deny” card was in fact used by Weiner for a full week back in 2011 and many in the media went along with it. I’ll bet Pepperidge Farm would remember “Help us Help you”

As for card two, when years later with a new scandal and Ken Starr unwilling to roll over the playbook changed:

There were Republicans and Democrats who, early in the scandal, assumed Clinton would have to resign. But he survived through the sheer power of the presidency. He used (and in some cases invented) White House privileges to thwart Starr. After an initial panic, Democrats on Capitol Hill came to see the scandal as a life-or-death matter and rallied around the president.

For Democrats highly invested in the GOP “war on women” meme there is no gain in Anthony Weiner’s success.

This is why many of those same democrats who stood behind Al Gore as he praised Clinton after impeachment are now going after Weiner.

Of course the Clinton scandals didn’t take place during the age of cell phones, Youtube and Twitter, nor was the idea of being known as the sexting paramour of a pol considered an attractive proposition as it apparently is now. If that was true this might have ended differently.

However Weiner & Huma are following one card of the Clinton Playbook that Byron doesn’t bring up. A Narcissistic concern only for themselves.

Bill Clinton rightly figured there was no percentage in resigning and forever being the first democrat to resign the presidency. He understood what a post resignation presidency would be and it wouldn’t be anything like it is today and that doesn’t even count Hilary. His wife would forever be tagged as not the woman who stood by him but his accomplice in deceiving the public at the start. the first lady who did so and it would have made her own ambitions much harder to achieve.

So they went all in vs Starr and with the media’s help managed to win.

Weiner & Huma are using the same calculus.

Weiner and Huma are staying in the race because they understand there is no advantage to leaving. If he pulls out he is the guy whose comeback failed and is done and Huma’s future is compromised by her defense of him. If he stays there is a chance, a tiny one, but a chance that he makes the cut to the next round.

If he does he can credit Huma’s public defense of him and if he fails it can be dismissed as just not enough to save the day. As for the critiques of her while right now women are hitting Huma for backing him some were hitting Hillary too. That will pass but Huma’s connections and the funding they can provide will not.

That’s why although many in the media world are hitting her, nobody in the political world is.

Bottom line while Weiner can’t play Clinton’s hand his best card is to stay put because it plays to the same motivation that Bill Clinton did.

Monday, a local political reporter admitted that everyone in San Diego knew what Democrat Mayor Bob Filner had been up to, but that they didn’t bother to do anything about it.

And now, after dozens of reporters from major news outlets swarmed Weiner for weeks, not a single outlet — not Politico, not BuzzFeed, not the New York Times — has audio or even a quote they can shove in Anthony Weiner’s face of him responding to a question about when the sexting stopped.

Because. No. One. Bothered. To. Ask.

Update 2: Talk about the tweet heard round the world:

@NolteNC Has anyone bothered to ask Bill Clinton if he has cheated on Hillary since Lewinsky?

Like this:

Amy:In a world ruled by a giant beaver, mankind builds many dams to please the beaver overlord. The low-lying city of Copenhagen is flooded. Thousands die. Devastated, the Danes never invent their namesake pastry. (pause) How does one miss that?

The Big Bang Theory The Zazzy Substitution 2010

In the reporting Business everyone makes an occasional error. This Morning one of my favorite Reporters Byron York tweeted this out:

Could you scan the entire NYT home page and not find the IRS story? You could. ow.ly/kVMeD

Like this:

Howard:Hey, you know what’d be a great idea? We get some girls over here and play Laser Obstacle Strip Chess.

Leonard:Believe me, Howard, any girl who would be willing to play that, you don’t want to see naked.

Howard:You underestimate me.

The Big Bang Theory The Work Song Nanocluster 2009

“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!

Patton 1970

Yesterday the Washington Examiner commented on the idea of the White House minting “Trillion dollar coins” to balance the budget:

Now that the Treasury is near the debt limit yet again, liberals have cooked up an even crazier scheme to avoid much-needed structural entitlement reform. This time, they claim that a 1997 statute passed to authorize the minting and selling of commemorative coins also authorizes the Treasury secretary to mint unlimited amounts of money. The Treasury could then deposit these coins at the Federal Reserve and use those funds to pay off our debts. The Obama administration has yet to comment on the collectible coin solution.

The debates over our nation’s debts and deficits can be tense. At moments of levity, the 14th Amendment and collectible coin schemes are both good for a chuckle. But our country also faces real and tough problems that demand real solutions. The Left does itself and the nation no favors by taking these schemes seriously.

And Byron York, who I like a lot poked fun at this idea a bit:

For those who take subject seriously: Should Obama create just one $1 trillion coin? 1,000 $1 billion coins? 1,000,000 $1 million coins?

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., has also announced plans to introduce a bill that would make it illegal to mint high-value coins to pay government debt.

I don’t laugh at them at all, I think countermeasures are vitally necessary.

If there is one thing these last four years have erased from my calculation it’s the idea that our friends on the left are limited in any way in their actions.

From Obamacare to Benghazi we’ve seen a White House willing to do ANYTHING to achieve their goals and a press willing to cover for them at every turn.

Why WOULD the White House hesitate to take any action that they think might be in their political interest, law be damned?

Consider this line from Byron York concerning the GOP’s attempt to get Democrats to pass a budgetemphasis mine:

As Sessions sees it, Reid’s budget gambit is the result of a long-term plan. “It’s not a failure of leadership,” Sessions said. “This is part of the president’s political tactics. There’s no doubt in my mind that the White House and the Senate leadership calculated that the lumps they would take for not producing a budget were preferable to actually exposing their financial plan for the future.“

Remember the Senate is required BY LAW to pass a budget, yet politically Harry Reid & the White House has been willing to ignore the law when it’s to their advantage and for three years the press and the public have ignored it.

Some may think Representative Greg Walden is pulling a stunt trying to advance this bill, I disagree. You’ve got to kill this option right now before it becomes a serious play.

If anyone thinks for one moment that the prospect of this administration turning us into Weimar on the Potomac worries this administration more than having to propose any budget cut that would upset the people who write the checks or the activists that turn out the vote, then you haven’t been paying attention for the last four years.

Update: fixed last sentence in 2nd to last paragraph.

Update 2:Clarity? How much more clarity do we need, but then again it took 10 plagues to get Pharaoh to let the Israelites go

Byron York tells a story a Mitt Romney story that make a lot of sense:

According to Scott, Romney revealed that polling from Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan’s former pollster whom Romney had hired for the ’94 campaign, showed it would be impossible for a pro-life candidate to win statewide office in Massachusetts. In light of that, Romney decided to run as a pro-choice candidate, pledging to support Roe v. Wade, while remaining personally pro-life.

In November 1993, according to Scott, Romney said he and Wirthlin, a Mormon whose brother and father were high-ranking church officials, traveled to Salt Lake City to meet with church elders. Gathering in the Church Administration Building, Romney, in Scott’s words, “laid out for church leaders … what his public position would be on abortion — personally opposed but willing to let others decide for themselves.”

Maybe it’s just me, but I think if you have a position or a belief that’s worth having it’s worth defending. If something is right you make your case for it. You defend it, you have enough faith in the public for them to respect your position.

Romney was not, here is what this tells me. Mitt Romney may or may not believe abortion is Murder but he certainly believes his election to public office trump it.

That doesn’t mean that Mitt Romney would not be a superior president to Barack Obama, he would be, by a lot, but it explains in a nutshell why he is an inferior candidate to Rick Santorum and most of the others.

President Obama has his sights set on raising $1 billion for his reelection campaign. Raising that money won’t be easy. But if you can hand out other people’s money to friends, it must get a lot easier. This crony capitalism and government waste is at the heart of our economic problems. It will destroy us if we don’t root it out. It’s not just a Democrat problem or a Republican problem. It’s a problem of our permanent political class. This won’t stop until “we the people” say enough is enough, and we retire the permanent political class that votes for this.

That goes unreported because that’s evidence of substance, intelligence and relevance. That’s not allowed in a Palin story. No the story is Joe “Hypothetical cat torturer” McGinniss’ claim that she hooked up with Glenn Rice two decades ago.

One of the advantages of writing about Sarah Palin it is almost always profitable, a favorable book on her attracts her supporters and any possible smear not only attracts her detractors but attracts MSM attention on a massive scale beyond anything resembling normal publicity. In a bad economy that’s money in the bank.

So if you are the New York Daily News part of a dying industry and the #3 paper in town the Sarah Palin “story” is the ultimate honey, Sarah Palin on the Cover sells papers, a scandalous sex rumor sells papers, and best of all a chance to hurt her supporters because, in their mind, her supporters being racists would object to the details.

Best of all since they are reporting the contents of an upcoming book, they can claim it has nothing to do with them, they’re just covering an existing story, plausible deniability.

Byron’s quaint re-tweet suggests surprise that the paper would go with this on the front page. Byron Byron Byron, you are assuming a professionalism unburdened by ideological taint in the newsroom that was always more apocryphal than real.

I’m sometimes a bit naive but when it comes to Sarah Palin and journalistic ethics, I’ve never been that naive.

Share this:

Like this:

The US media has been playing down the connections between Al Qaeda and the Libyan Rebels for a while now, but today Byron York tackles it:

Take Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, a leader of U.S.-supported rebels in the fighting for Adjabiya. His hometown, Darnah, has produced many jihadis, and after the Sept. 11 attacks al-Hasidi traveled to Afghanistan to fight the “foreign invasion” — that is, the U.S. military. According to a report in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, al-Hasidi says he was later captured in Pakistan, handed over to the U.S., then held in prison in Libya before being released in 2008.

In addition to fighting the U.S. in Afghanistan, al-Hasidi also says he recruited about two dozen men to fight the U.S. in Iraq.

What is more amazing than those two sentences is the response of the NYT to this:

“No one seems all that frightened by him,” the New York Times wrote of al-Hasidi after a visit to Darnah in early March. Al-Hasidi, the paper reported, “praises Osama bin Laden’s ‘good points’ but denounces the 9/11 attacks on the United States.” And besides, the Times reported, al-Hasidi finds it amusing that the government of Moammar Gadhafi considers him an al Qaeda terrorist. “He promised to lay down his arms once victory is won and return, he said, to teaching,” the Times reported.

Whenever Afghanistan comes up on Morning Joe he repeats the mantra that there are only a few Al Qaeda present there. Apparently there are a lot more Al Qaeda in Libya and we are saving them from Gaddafi.

Now given that we are there now, and fighting we should fight to win, but it’s one thing to fight and win in Libya with Al-Qaeda at our side, it’s another thing to arm this guys:

But Sky News now understands the US is looking at a legal framework to allow limited supplies of arms to the rebels, if they can prove they need them to defend themselves from attack.

Mark Kornblau, spokesman for US Ambassador Dr Susan Rice, confirmed it was a possibility.

Like this:

The blog stop shouting has only 4 posts in it over the last 3 years, but this one should be repeated everywhere.

You MUST go to her site and read this but I’m going to grab just a few pieces to share its awesomeness:

I have been silent long enough. I have bent, I have yielded, I have endured slander, dishonesty, ad hominem attacks and actual physical threats.

Anger is a powerful motivator.

She talks of an encounter with Code Pink, first via reason and then via counter protest, it is a priceless story, she continues:

The Left likes to use what they believe to be witty signage (although I am not sure how BUSHCHIMPHITLER qualifies as “witty”), props and sheer numbers of die hard believers and rent-a-students to validate the “justness” of their cause-du-jour and to manufacture a sense of widespread support for their “issue”.

So we took your tools and began to employ them against you. And you don’t like it very much. Except we don’t have to pay anyone to come to our rallies, and that just infuriates you further.

The left absolutely positively refuses to believe that the Tea Party is grass roots because none of their operation is, instead you get stuff like this via Ann Althouse:

Bill Lueders’s Isthmus article is subtitled “The Triumph of Stupidity.” He asks UW-Madison political science professor Charles Franklin how people could vote the way they did, and when Franklin answers “They’re pretty damn stupid,” he says “Thank you, professor… That’s the answer I was looking for.

Althouse continues:

Welcome to my world: Dane County, Wisconsin, home of people who tell themselves they are the smart people and those who disagree with them must certainly be dumb. They don’t go through the exercise of putting themselves in the place of someone who thinks differently from the way they do. But how would it feel to be intelligent, informed, and well-meaning and to think what conservatives think? Isn’t that the right way for an intelligent, informed, and well-meaning person to understand other people? If you short circuit that process and go right to the assumption that people who don’t agree with you are stupid, how do you maintain the belief that you are, in fact, intelligent, informed, and well-meaning?

What is liberal about this attitude toward other people?

Pretty damning, I’m sure the public would resent it, if they ever knew it was said as Byron York explains:

But Franklin is the real star of the story. If you read his quotes in mainstream publications, you’ll find a series of measured statements on political trends. Democrats appealing to the youth vote in the run-up to the midterms are “betting long odds, given the very long history of low turnout in midterms among young voters,” Franklin told the Washington Post recently. Final pre-election polls suggested “a Republican wave of genuinely historical proportions,” he told USA Today. Feingold’s problems had “more to do with the mood of the country than with Feingold himself,” he told the Boston Globe.

It’s all pretty unremarkable stuff. And readers would have no idea what Franklin really thinks about the voters whose opinions he’s measuring and commenting on. But now they do.

Well the Military Mom of 4 at stop shouting knows what they think and has this message to Franklin and the rest of the left in denial:

Either way, I am confident you can deduce the “tone”of my rebuttal.

Realizing that you are losing your grip on the public schools, that the youth that propelled the boy-king to victory have abandoned you, that the bitter, blue collar white workers are now Tea Party grandmas and grandpas, that you have lost control of the federal checkbook and the legislative calendar,

Imagine for a moment that Republicans were not consumed with the various faults of the party’s newly chosen Delaware Senate candidate, Christine O’Donnell. What would GOP operatives, both in Delaware and in Washington, be doing right now? They’d be attacking the record of O’Donnell’s Democratic opponent, Chris Coons. As it turns out, there’s plenty to attack, if Republicans ever get around to it.

Why have the smartest guys in the room been so concerned to be proven as the smartest guys in the room instead of highlighting Coons record of stuff like this:

Coons inherited a surplus. Celebrating victory on election night in 2004, he said his “top priority would be to continue balancing the budget without increasing property taxes,” according to an account in the local News Journal. Yet in 2006, he pushed through a 5 percent increase in property taxes. In 2007, he raised property taxes 17.5 percent. In 2009, he raised them another 25 percent.

Coons wanted to raise other taxes, too. He proposed a hotel tax, a tax on paramedic services, even a tax on people who call 911 from cell phones.

Coons says the increases were necessary because New Castle County, despite its surplus, was saddled with extravagant spending obligations made by his predecessor. “Chris made really tough decisions, and after bringing folks together was able to say that we have to have some level of shared sacrifice if we want to get the county back on track,” says Coons spokesman Daniel McElhatton. “He was able to restore New Castle County to fiscal responsibility.”

Well, not exactly. In January 2009, Coons warned the county might be headed for bankruptcy.

But it doesn’t matter to the elite commentators. The problem their jobs are based upon being the smartest guys in the room, why else are you buying their books or reading their columns. If Christine O’Donnell wins who needs them?

You see, there are always these guys who’ve got it all lined up. They have every natural advantage. They’ve got the system figured out and the odds are stacked so overwhelmingly in their favor that, by all rights, there’s no way on earth to beat ‘em. They’re winners.

Yet there are rare occasions when the luck just tumbles the other way. The winner loses, and the loser wins.

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the New York Times: 0.

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the Washington Post: 0.

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on NBC Nightly News: 0.

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on ABC World News: 0.

Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on CBS Evening News: 0.

If you were to receive your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving the Obama administration redefining the space agency’s mission to feature outreach to Muslim countries, your response would be, “Huh?” Among all the news these distinguished outlets have seen fit to cover in recent days, the NASA story has not made the cut.

An even better question. How much longer in an internet age can the MSM decide that a story on the front Page of Drudge for two days will not be seen if they ignore it? How long can the MSM decide that Memeorandum doesn’t exist?

Share this:

Like this:

York proves once again why he is the best reporter in the US today, he actually gets to the bottom of the Arizona immigration bill:

Critics have focused on the term “reasonable suspicion” to suggest that the law would give police the power to pick anyone out of a crowd for any reason and force them to prove they are in the U.S. legally. Some foresee mass civil rights violations targeting Hispanics.

What fewer people have noticed is the phrase “lawful contact,” which defines what must be going on before police even think about checking immigration status. “That means the officer is already engaged in some detention of an individual because he’s violated some other law,” says Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri Kansas City Law School professor who helped draft the measure. “The most likely context where this law would come into play is a traffic stop.”

As far as “reasonable suspicion” is concerned, there is a great deal of case law dealing with the idea, but in immigration matters, it means a combination of circumstances that, taken together, cause the officer to suspect lawbreaking. It’s not race — Arizona’s new law specifically says race and ethnicity cannot be the sole factors in determining a reasonable suspicion. emphasis mine

It’s amazing what you actually find out when you read bills or have reporters do so.

Over to you Joe and Mika

Update: Eugene Robinson, Joe & Mika continue to hit the bill although in fairness Robinson concedes that the border need to be protected. Have anyone of them read the bill like Byron York?

Like this:

If you read this blog at all you know that I consider ByronYork one of the finest reporters in the United States. I was very flattered that he gave me a few minutes of his time at the Tea Party Express Rally.

By using the word “regime,” Limbaugh was doing something he does all the time: throwing the language of the opposition back in their faces. In the Bush years, we often heard the phrase “Bush regime” from some quarters of the left. So Limbaugh applied it to Obama.

Apparently some people didn’t get it. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews appeared deeply troubled by the word. “I’ve never seen language like this in the American press,”

York document’s Matthews deep distress at the use of the word “regime” and how it so bothered him, then of course finds over 6000 uses during the Bush years including this gem:

Finally — you knew this was coming — on June 14, 2002, Chris Matthews himself introduced a panel discussion about a letter signed by many prominent leftists condemning the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror. “Let’s go to the Reverend Al Sharpton,” Matthews said. “Reverend Sharpton, what do you make of this letter and this panoply of the left condemning the Bush regime?”

Oops. Perhaps Joe McCarthy never called the U.S. government a regime, but Chris Matthews did. And a lot of other people did, too. So now we are supposed to believe him when he expresses disgust at Rush Limbaugh doing the same?

the left’s abiding belief that people on the right are so foolish that they don’t know how to do a google, Nexis search nor our ability to see video tape never ceases to amaze me.

The are so used to the concept that they are the gatekeepers that mere mortals like ourselves could not possibly catch them beclowning themselves.

But the best part of the film is listening to the naive garbage that Maloney persuaded Obama supporters to spout a few months ago. Already, it seems as dated as the euphoria surrounding Jimmy Carter’s election.

This morning on MSNBC, presidential adviser David Axelrod was at pains to explain how his boss could possibly deserve this prize. “I think it’s an affirmation by the Nobel committee that the things he’s been working on and talking about around the world are important for humanity.”

Incredibly, “just words” appear to have been good enough to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Listen to your Granny

Food Glorious Food

Find Discounts at the Stores you Love

Bloggers Prayer

Oh God, you who gave free will to your creation, bless those who use that precious gift to blog.

May we though this gift of freedom of expression enlighten, entertain and inform our readers, and we ask particular blessing for those who bring your word across the net, that they may faithfully execute your command to make disciples of all nations.